


Bring It On Home

by fuckener



Category: Free!
Genre: Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1846543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru farms fish. Nagisa freeloads. Together, they make the best of two bad situations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring It On Home

When Nagisa comes back, Iwatobi high is gated off and scheduled to be knocked down altogether. There's damp in the old walls there and they can't have students breathing it in.

Haru does not pass by it anymore on his way to work. It takes ten minutes longer every morning to avoid walking anywhere the demolition noise can be heard, on a route that looks a little less like it belongs to the town he grew up in.

Now he’s late every morning, and Goro is angry with him when he arrives. He berates Haru until he runs out of breath, and then watches him feed the fish for a quiet moment before apologising. He doesn’t try to put his hand on Haru’s back anymore or ask him how he’s doing. Haru thinks this is a good thing, and watches the fish hastily bob up to the surface of the water to eat the little handfuls of food he offers.

When Nagisa comes back, the sun is setting like it always does when Haru comes home from work. It’s dry out. Haru wants a bath. He wants to stop being suddenly confronted every few days by the thought that soon, someone will hammer into the bottom of the old swimming pool until it breaks apart and fill it up with dirt.

In the house, he’s already got his shirt off and a hand hovering over the button of his jeans when he reaches the bathroom, and a familiar voice says, “Woah, Haru-chan, what a welcome!”

He looks up.

Nagisa waves at him from his own bathtub.

He stares.

“I was travelling all day, so I thought I’d better wash up before you got home,” Nagisa says, as though this explains anything. Then he pulls a face. “But geez, Haru-chan - you really stink!” He gives Haru a look of faux-wonder. “Have you actually _become_ part fish since the last time I saw you?”

Haru stares.

Nagisa - face shiny with water and profuse amounts of foam clinging to his hair - still appears to be existing in his bathtub. Apparently, he’s used up most of the salts and bubble-bath Kou sent him after she and her husband went to a spa in North Japan that Haru himself had no interest in using, ever.

“I was working,” he says.

Water sprinkles onto the tiles when Nagisa throws his head back and laughs, and Haru then notices his bathroom floor is actually sloshing with it.

“What are you? A fish farmer?” Nagisa asks, sounding like he finds the idea hilariously funny.

“Yes,” Haru says.

For a moment, Nagisa looks at him in surprise, mouth parted slightly. Then he just laughs again, like he’s pretending Haru just played along with his joke, and the past has not proved Haru thoroughly incapable of doing that.

He blows a bubble out of his palm that floats up to the ceiling. Haru watches it drift higher and higher until it pops unceremoniously on the light bulb, then looks back at him.

“Are you staying?”

Nagisa blinks, smiles his saccharine smile. “Is that okay?” he asks.

It’s been two years since they last saw each other face-to-face and two since the house was empty – and it’s not exactly like Nagisa can catch the train back to his parents’ place anymore.

The look he’s giving Haru is intent now, his hands curled around the rim of the tub - Haru can see a thin line of skin paler than the rest on one of his fingers where his ring used to be.

He looks at the white skin there for a moment and then shrugs. “It’s fine.”

Nagisa beams up at him and shoots out of the water to wrap him in a hug that’s very nude and very enthusiastic on his part but substantially less so on Haru’s.

“Don’t,” Haru says, but he doesn’t push him away.

-

As a thank you, Nagisa offers to cook dinner but finds almost nothing in the fridge.

“Not even mackerel?” Nagisa says. He’s bent over with nearly the whole top half of his body inside the freezer and when he looks over his shoulder at Haru the expression on his face is incredulous. “No _mackerel_ , Haru-chan?”

Haru picks up the phone and dials the number for the take-out place in town. “I don’t eat it anymore.”

Nagisa stares at him as he orders. He can feel it, but doesn’t look back – all he’d see is wide-eyed pity and every single inch of Nagisa’s body vibrating with the effort it takes him not to offer Haru physical comfort.

However, when he hangs up the phone, Nagisa just bounds over to him and says, brightly, “You remembered my order! It’s been so long.”

It’s an effortless thing to remember after the hundred times they’d been out to eat together: Nagisa liked to eat anything, but particularly spicy food that he had to stop eating halfway to fan his tongue with his hand and down all of his (and then Rei's) water; Rei liked to agonize over which hypothetical dish he’d enjoy most and then hastily order something at random when the waiter appeared; Rin liked to choose something new that he inevitably ended up hating and then picked at it irritably; Kou liked to order something Rin liked so that when she traded plates with him he stopped complaining; Mako liked to eat simple things he’d had a hundred times before, and feed pieces to Haru when nobody else was looking. Mako liked to wake up early on Saturdays and make big breakfasts for them both to bring into the bed, Mako liked to kiss him awake and laugh low into his mouth, and -

Nagisa takes his hand.

Haru startles, blinks at him, returns, and Nagisa smiles up at him, looking almost the exact same as he did when they were kids. It's comforting in a way, having someone look at Haru like he's sixteen and special.

"Take a seat, Haru-chan," Nagisa tells him.

It takes Nagisa bodily pushing him onto the living room floor to get him sitting down, and the whole time he continues to act like this is normal and alright: tiptoeing around the subject of everything and everyone they're really thinking about. Haru doesn't mind it, personally, but he's surprised Nagisa is doing so much to avoid it all when he's never been anything but outright in the past.

The TV comes on for the first time in months. Nagisa pours them glasses of water and sets out the food when it comes, singing off-key as he does so, while Haru stares blankly at the television screen from the floor.

A high school drama. He watches it blankly: no swimming, and countless relationship problems.

"I'm starved!" Nagisa says as he digs in.

Rice, predictably, goes everywhere. Nagisa consumes enough food to satisfy a family of four within a record breakingly short time period.

Haru picks at his his own and watches him.

-

Haru keeps remembering the day Rei won the ring in the arcade in town. It was a plastic pink consolation prize for the giant teddy he couldn't manage to get, but Nagisa had said he loved it, and rarely taken it off. Once, Haru got Makoto to admit it was ugly just by staring long enough.

Haru doesn't ask why it's missing from Nagisa's finger.

That’s probably the reason that Nagisa came to him in the first place. He's never been good at being alone, and they understand each other well enough. Maybe Haru’s kind of grief counselling is what Nagisa wants as opposed to Makoto’s gentle prying, or Rin’s penchant for melodrama. He just wants to stay with Haru after years of relative radio silence between them and pretend nothing is really wrong.

That’s alright, though. Haru understands.

-

For the next few days, Haru works and Nagisa complains about his smell when he comes home and appears to be in the process of cleaning every room in the house as payment for staying in it. His parents’ bedroom door stays firmly shut and the things they left with him continue gathering dust. Haru checks sometimes to make sure he hasn't been in there, and he spends less time in the bath. Nagisa tries to learn how to cook.

“This is a disaster!”

In the kitchen, Haru finds him in front of a red pepper that’s been cut into a few wonky slices and a knife that’s far too big to be chopping it. He turns to Haru with his thumb in his mouth, eyes wide and pained, and says, “My finger’th _bleeding_!”

There’s a thin tear across the skin that's not bleeding _that_ much. Haru puts a band-aid over it while Nagisa looks down at his thumb like it’s out to get him.

“Your knives are poor quality," Nagisa tells him earnestly.

"I don't think so."

The responsibility apparently falls on him to teach Nagisa how to make stir-fry without chopping his hands off. Nagisa tells him he's a good cook but not a very verbal teacher and Haru says, “..."

He's tired of take-out, though, so it's worth the hassle; and Nagisa goes for seconds and thirds, declaring Haru to be a master chef, and promising that he'll cook meals from now on. Haru is troubled by that last part, but moreso about the idea of Nagisa being in the kitchen again (possibly unsupervised, even) than the idea of him staying a while longer.

-

The days stop dragging along with him around, Haru notices. It's been a long time since he's spent time with someone this much, had someone to come home to – someone who almost understands.

He gets off early, one night. Goro gives him a raise for no real reason, but Haru knew from the pleased look he gave him when he handed over the money that he's being paid for his relative happiness. He's punctual, efficient. Doesn't zone out quite as much. He lets Goro buy him lunch and talk about the good old days with censored names and a big, nostalgic grin.

After work, Haru buys some cake with the money from the bakery in town. Strawberry with vanilla cream: Nagisa's favourite. They had it at his 10th birthday - Mako was allergic to strawberries and Rin chased him around the house with a handful of them, and Nagisa ate at a plastic pink table with Haru and his little sister in the backyard and whispered to him that she had a crush on him. She'd gone red faced and said she did _not_ , and then clung to Haru until he had to go home that night. Nagisa had to pry her off of him, laughing, cream still smeared across his face.

When he gets back, Nagisa is upstairs in the bathroom. Haru can hear him talking on his phone inside, and he sets the box with the cake on the kitchen counter and eats some of the leftovers in the fridge labelled ' **HARU-CHAN'S!!! DON'T EAT ME NAGISA!!** '

Half an hour passes, and Haru stands quietly at the bottom of the stairs, listening for Nagisa's voice. He's still talking, but his voice sounds strange from here, different than usual: he's talking to Rei. Haru wishes he'd taken this call in one of the bedrooms. He suddenly wishes he was in his bathtub, water thick by his ears, the sound of his heartbeat drowning out the rest of the world.

It takes another fifteen minutes for Nagisa to come down. His eyes are unsettlingly red around the edges, but he gives Haru the same smile as always, broad and happy to see him, like Haru doesn't know what a person falling apart looks like (he'd forgotten, maybe. He wishes he still did).

"Haru-chan!" Nagisa greets, brightly. His hair is messy, too, and he's wearing a particularly ugly patterned T-shirt Haru knows doesn't belong to either of them. "You're home early. Your dinner's in the fridge, did you -"

He trails off, looking in the kitchen. On the countertop, Haru has left the box from the bakery open - the cake is lying inside, dripping strawberry syrup and cream onto the cardboard bottom.

Nagisa stands still for a long time just looking at it. When he turns back around, his eyes are wet and undeniably sad.

"You got that for me?" he asks, and his mouth makes funny shapes while he talks, like he can't control it properly. He wipes one of his eyes and looks at the floor, smiling an odd smile. "You remembered it was my favourite. It still is. He used to - he learned how to make it for me. Sometimes, when things were really bad or really good... He'd surprise me with some." He looks at Haru again and Haru stares and distantly feels sick.

(Sometimes, he closes his eyes in the bath water and sinks low and Makoto is still making dinner in the kitchen, Makoto is still humming along with the radio downstairs while he chops vegetables on the scuffed old chopping board because he thinks Haru can't hear him above. Sometimes, Haru smells him in the house, on the linens. Sometimes, he wonders if even the living leave ghosts behind.)

"Thank you for the thought," Nagisa says unevenly. His smile wobbles, makes his eyes crinkle enough to force the tears out in thin little lines down his cheeks. "But I can't eat it." He laughs a little at himself, a funny, watery sound.

Haru remembers how Mako had been terrified of Rin, brandishing tiny ripe strawberries at him like weapons. He'd curled up by Haru's seat outside, trying to hide, but even then he was far bigger than the rest of them and obvious from a distance. He'd whispered, pale-eyed, "Save me, Haru," and when Rin had come Haru had dutifully and mercilessly pelted him with pieces of candy until he'd given in and promised to stop.

"Okay," Haru says, nodding. And then, "Nagisa, don't cry."

Nagisa looks briefly surprised but then laughs, falteringly. The way he rubs at his eyes seems almost, _almost_ embarrassed. "I'm not! You stink so bad my eyes are watering." He rubs at them again, and then he gives Haru a warm look that settles his tense stomach.

He walks over to him and grabs his hands, pulling him up from the floor with a surprising amount of strength. "Up up up! You need a wash, Haru-chan."

Nagisa runs the bath for him. He adds some of the terrible poisonous bath salts and bubbles to it and that Haru stares at it warily after he’s gone. He resolves to hide the rest somewhere they can never be found again, but he eventually gets in and finds that it's surprisingly not the worst thing in the world. It's overly sweet smelling and the bubbles make everything unnecessarily messy, but it's – nice. Downstairs, Nagisa sings along off key to the opening of a cartoon.

-

Nagisa comes to work with him one day to see Goro, who can't hide how pleased he is to see him. He watches Haru feed the fish, a hand over his nose. He grins up at Haru underneath it. "You're a good caretaker, Haru-chan."

"They're just fish," Haru says.

He sprinkles some of the fish food over Nagisa's head. Nagisa squawks and almost falls into the water trying to get away from him.

-

Sometimes, Nagisa talks to Makoto.

Haru knows because he takes the calls outside and walks away from the house; he talks to Rin wherever he is when he calls, unless it's a conversation about Rei, then he takes it to the guest room. He talks to Rei in the bathroom - if Nagisa thinks being in there means he can make it less obvious that he's been crying afterward, he's wrong.

It's been a year and a half since Haru last properly spoke to Makoto: Makoto said maybe Haru just needed more time to think everything over. Six months before that, Haru did not go to the city with him, and Makoto looked sad even when he grinned, and told Haru maybe time apart would be good, since they'd always been together. He said he'd wait as long as he had to, and Haru had been uneasy about the idea. He even offered to stay, but he had a job waiting in the city, somewhere new to live, and Haru didn't think it was a good idea to be the only thing tying him down to Iwatobi.

After that, Rin had come to see him for a few days. Nagisa had gone into the city to see Makoto. Rei had been in London with his family, and had sent Haru approximately 200 unanswered texts that each individually took up his entire cell phone screen. Haru's fingers had become semi-permanently wrinkled from bath water.

Rin tried to make him go swimming at the gym instead, made him mackerel for breakfast that Haru couldn't touch, tried to goad him into talking about his feelings and sometimes _did_ effectively distract him from Makoto; but not very often. Haru remembers Rin sitting slouched on the toilet lid, complaining to him about the whole situation, while he was sunk into the bathtub.

"I don't get why you didn't _go_ ," Rin had complained, looking with evident dislike at – everything. "I know you hate this fucking house. I hate this fucking house."

"It's my house," Haru said. His parents'; but they hadn't been home in so long even by then it was basically just his.

"It _sucks_!" Rin told him. "Makoto's new place is way better than this house. It doesn't smell like dust and like…" He wrinkled his nose. "Stale gay sex."

"I like how it smells," Haru said, because the pillows still smelled like Makoto then.

Rin left after a week or so, insisting that Haru rethink his priorities and giving him a parting, bone-crushing embrace before he left. "You're my best friend," Rin had said, lowly, "but you're the stupidest man I've ever met."

Haru said, "You too."

Nagisa had called him a few times that week too, with the sound of cars and strangers' voices in the background every time. He'd talked about how great the city was, and funny pictures Rei's sister had sent him of Rei in London, and asked how Haru was doing and if Rin-chan had said anything stupid. He said Makoto was sad but alright, and everything would turn out okay, he'd see – and then they'd all drifted apart a little. Makoto worked as nursery teacher in the city, Nagisa was finishing his history degree, Rei was working at his father's company and Rin was coaching somewhere in Europe. Haru was - still here.

The next time Nagisa takes his phone outside, Haru doesn't try to eavesdrop, but he watches him from the window. It's a good sign that he smiles so much while he talks to him. He must be okay, then.

Haru wonders how Nagisa tells him he's doing. He wonders if Nagisa still thinks everything will be okay.

-

(Haru overhears him in the bathroom, once. His voice is strange and sad. All Haru makes out is, "I don't know yet. I miss you." Then he walks quietly back to his room, and when Nagisa comes out, he suggests they go out for dinner that night: Nagisa's favourite restaurant. There are too many spaces at the table they eat at.)

-

A week passes. The strawberry cake in the fridge is beginning to look infected. Nagisa says he should leave soon and that he's sorry he's been here so long. After the summer, he'll be back to studying to be a teacher (something that he actively avoids talking about that as much as he does Rei) and he doesn't seem to know where he should be right now.

He's made them both (only slightly questionable) curry tonight.

"The apartment is empty now," Nagisa says, which is news to Haru – sometimes he shares little details like that and leaves Haru to piece them into a whole story. It's not easy, but he doesn't think Nagisa would enjoy sharing information he wasn't openly offering in the first place. "I don't… like being there when it's like that. I don't know if I'll ever like being there again."

Haru privately doubts it.

"Stay," he says.

Nagisa blinks at him. His cheeks are puffed out from a truly impressive mouthful of rice. He swallows it down with effort and then says, uncomfortably, "Haru-chan, you shouldn't be so courteous to a freeloader."

Haru looks at him. "You're like family."

Nagisa flushes for the first time since Haru has ever known him, very slightly.

"A week," he says, resolutely. "Another week, and then Haru-chan has suffered enough of my cooking."

Haru wants him to stay. He doesn't like the thought of them both in their empty homes - he can remember being alone too well, for too long.

-

Nagisa grills completely edible chicken, and then insists that they celebrate with sake.

Tonight, Haru gathers this much: Rei hated working for his dad. Nagisa hated the idea of being a teacher after he'd gotten a taste of it. Rei's dad gave him an out and he quit. They both wanted to leave Japan. Nagisa's mother got in touch with him for the first time in years and still pretended Rei didn't exist but told him they were proud he was putting his studies to use – then Nagisa wanted to stay, because he thought things between them could change. He thought one day they'd be able to love Rei like a son, and Rei had told him they didn't know how to love the son they had. They argued. Nagisa's father still isn't ready to see him yet, but Nagisa shrugs with a weak smile and says, "I've waited this long, now." Rei is in America waiting for him.

"He'll wait forever, he said," Nagisa tells him. They're in the back yard, sitting on the doorstep. Nagisa is trying to show him certain constellations but can't remember exactly where they are. He looks at Haru. "But nobody really does that, do they?"

Then he sighs and looks back up at the sky. Haru imagines that someone out there does for a brief, indulgent moment.

-

It's been two weeks since Nagisa showed up.

Haru has the day off and cooks breakfast for them both as a treat. Nagisa wants to spend the whole day out, going everywhere, doing everything. He was up late on the phone last night – Haru heard him unlocking the bathroom door at 2am. He wants distractions. Haru does too.

They go by the harbour, then Nagisa wants to see a movie about one man who can fight an infinite amount of other men and sustain no damage that Haru ends up enjoying slightly too. There's an arcade next door they used to go to as kids that they spend a while in – same games, with Nagisa's aim with a plastic gun as off-target as ever beside him. They avoid the machine Rei once spent thirty straight minutes in front of and all of his allowance on in order to win a plastic ring for Nagisa. They eat dinner at a sushi place by the beach, and Nagisa requests a table for three people so he can sit the giant octopus plushie Haru won in the arcade on its own chair.

"Octo-chan isn't hungry," he tells the waiter.

"He can drink some of my water," Haru deadpans.

Nagisa laughs. The waiter looks at them like they're stupid.

After he leaves, Haru can see the table behind him where Nagisa's parents are sitting across the room. He hasn't seen them in years – they're older, but the way Haru thinks of them has changed the way they look, he thinks. They don't look as kindly as they did when he was a kid. Instead, they just look like two people who don't care about their son anymore.

Bitterness rises in his throat. He looks away, softly warns, "Nagisa, look."

He doesn't know what Nagisa will do. He might go over to see them, even, or catch their attention. He might cry. Haru doesn't know what he'd do. Makoto used to always tell him even if his parents weren't around, he still had a family that loved him – had Makoto, had Rin and Nagisa and Rei. Haru wonders what Makoto would do here, what he'd do if they were looking across at Haru's parents, instead.

Nagisa just stares.

Their drinks come, and he keeps staring like he doesn't even notice. His parents are standing up and pushing their chairs in when he finally turns away, looking down at the table. His mouth twitches.

"I just realised something," he says. "I was fine without them all this time." He looks up at Haru – there's something pained in his expression, but he genuinely looks happy. "The family I have now is better."

Haru looks back at him. Smiles.

His parents pass them by as they leave. Nagisa doesn't look up at them. It's only his father who notices them there, halfway out the door when his eyes catch on his son and then on Haru, who looks blankly back at him. He uses one of the octopus' tentacles to wave him goodbye.

Nagisa smiles at him after they've gone. His eyes are a bit watery, but he seems okay. When the food comes, he's back to his normal self, talking away, pretending to feed the plushie food by pressing his chopsticks to its happy mouth. Haru looks at the table his parents were at and feels the same bittersweet mix of sadness and relief he'd saw on Nagisa's face earlier, and then he puts it behind him.

-

That night, Nagisa decides he wants to go back to Iwatobi high before it's gone.

It’s a terrible idea and it makes Haru slightly nauseous, but Nagisa drags him up to the school gates and holds his hand firmly all the way.

They’ve taken measures to keep kids out - it’s fenced off completely with signs everywhere warning about trespassing. All of the windows boarded shut. It looks nothing like Haru remembers of high school, especially in the dark like this, especially with Nagisa next to him looking so obviously upset.

His grip on Haru’s hand goes limp. Haru squeezes his.

“I never imagined this happening,” Nagisa says, quietly, curling his fingers into the gaps in the fence’s chains. He lets out a shaky breath and puts his forehead against the metal.

Underneath Haru’s skin, old bruises are starting to ache. “Let’s go home.”

Nagisa looks at him for a moment. “Okay, Haru-chan,” he says, and then he let’s his hand go and climbs over the fence to the other side.

“No,” Haru says, frowning, and then he follows.

There's graffiti across the walls and a narrow opening in one of the first floor windows they manage to slip through. Nagisa uses the light on his phone to navigate them through the building, pulling Haru along with him by the hand and all the while Haru has a sinking feeling he knows where they’re headed.

“This place smells,” he tells Nagisa, as though anything will dissuade him from going further.

True to form, Nagisa just laughs. “You’d know!”

They go past their old classrooms, the faculty office they’d meet Amakata-san in, the hall they celebrated their graduation in – Nagisa actually stops and pulls him inside of it to walks around the dusty floorboards and flash his light on every empty corner of the room.

“I cried when you and Mako-chan graduated,” Nagisa reminisces, his light fixed on the stage at the front of the hall. It’s the first time he’s properly mentioned Makoto to him since he came and it makes the pain of walking around in here worse.

“I remember,” Haru says, and he does: he remembers Nagisa, Rei and Kou noisily cheering when their names were called and a panicked Rei wiping at Nagisa’s eyes with clumsy hands, and then at his own. His parents’ seats were empty; they sent him a card a few days later. He remembers being alone with Makoto on the roof, in their uniforms for the last time, and Makoto kissing him awkwardly just right of his mouth. Makoto offering his hand out before they returned home, smiling at him and saying, “Together, right?” Everything together, always together.

He remembers Rei and Nagisa graduating too, and how Nagisa’s parents hadn’t shown up so he’d asked Haru and Makoto to come instead. Rin was there to see Kou and he sat by them - Haru remembers him cursing about Nagisa’s mom and dad and Haru’s own, and Mako telling him softly, “But we're here, Rin.” He remembers feeling a strange, quiet melancholy in his chest at the idea of all of them having officially grown up, out of high school. He remembers meeting Nagisa’s youngest sister outside and going for dinner with everyone, and the way Nagisa and Rei looked at each other, and the way Mako fed him pieces of his meal when nobody was looking.

It all feels like so long ago.

They stand for a little while longer before Nagisa tugs him onward, through hallways and down staircases, until they reach the old tiny swimming club locker room.

“We’re still here,” Nagisa notices, aiming the light towards a pin board on the wall with the picture of them at their first competition. They look younger, maybe, but even now it’s hard to pinpoint the differences in Nagisa’s face, or his own. Makoto’s hair isn’t so long anymore, and his skin is less tanned most of the year. He’s still sweet-faced, still has those two dimples when he smiles wide enough – or at least, he did the last time Haru saw him.

He looks away from the photograph. In the dark, he can only just make out the expression on Nagisa’s face as he stares at it. The light shines tellingly on his eyes. He lets go of Haru’s hand again and thumbs across Rei’s smile.

Haru reaches out and takes his hand. He looks down at Nagisa and says again, insistently, “Let’s go home.”

Nagisa half-smiles and leads him out the door.

-

The pool still seems to be in good condition when Nagisa pulls the cover off of it. It’s summer, so it shouldn’t be too cold, even at night, and it looks the same even with the moon’s reflection in it.

Haru remembers every inch of the water. Haru remembers so much that it always hurts him somewhere, in the small space that lurks behind his heart. He puts a hand in and finds it barely warm enough, finds the rest of his arm sinking into it anyway.

At his side, Nagisa has stripped himself entirely, and all but drops himself inside.

His head bobs up over the surface afterwards and he pulls away the hair plastered to his face, smiling up at him.

Haru looks at him briefly, then at where his arm has submerged itself in the water. Then he dives in.

“Your clothes, Haru-chan!” Nagisa reminds him belatedly, his hands up to defend himself from the splash.

Haru swims laps, dives underneath the surface, floats on his back. It feels like he hasn’t swum in so long, not since Makoto, not since skinny-dipping in his parent’s holiday house in Europe. _Too_ long: the water warms around him, parts for the arches of his hands and feet. It’s alive against his skin, sticking him to his clothes, swaying against his body, but – it doesn't feel the way it did then. It doesn't feel like coming home.

Nagisa hums and leans on the edge, looking up at the sky. Haru floats across the water on his back and closes his eyes and lets every little wave lap at his sides. It's been so long. If he closes his eyes, for a moment it could be high school again.

“I wish the club had lasted forever sometimes,” Nagisa says from the side. Haru keeps his eyes shut and floats on. “But everything changed. There's nothing keeping me here anymore without this place, not really. Without…"

Haru wishes they could stop remembering.

The water is a familiar comfort, but it's not how it used to be when it felt like swimming was his first love. It's not like the weekend in France with Makoto, and that pool of sky-blue water they found by the house. It's not like it was now Haru knows something better exists.

His toes touch the bottom of the pool again and he watches Nagisa lean his back against the steps of the ladder. He swims over to him, quietly.

Nagisa isn't smiling when he reaches him. He looks, for the first time Haru can remember, very different than the kid he first met. Older, quietened. Haru touches the side of his face.

"Maybe it's good I didn't go with him then," Nagisa says, thoughtfully. "Because I hadn't seen you in so long. I saw Rin-chan, and Kou-chan, and Mako-chan… but I missed you. Maybe if I'd left, I'd have always missed you a little, even if we saw each other again after - because we didn't have this time together." He reaches up and slides his fingers through the ones Haru has against his cheek. Their joined hands slip under the water. "You made all this badness better, Haru-chan. I didn't think anything could."

Haru thinks, You too; thinks, Me neither. He thinks, Maybe you're right.

Nagisa leans up and Haru lowers. (He hasn't kissed anyone in two years – Makoto, by the front door. Makoto, in his bed; Makoto, on the dewy French grass; sixteen-year-old Makoto, at sunset, shyly reaching for him that first time at the harbour. He hasn't kissed anyone _but_ Makoto.) It's soft and brief, and Nagisa hums against his lips, even smiles against them. It's – nice, even.

Afterwards, Nagisa touches his mouth and lets out a little laugh. He looks up at Haru with his wide, smiling eyes. "See? Now I have so much more of you to remember."

Haru splashes him. Nagisa gets out of the pool first and then all but races back and forth from the house to bring a new set of clothes for Haru to wear and a towel. He says, panting, "It'll be a wonder if you aren't sick tomorrow!"

"I'll be fine," Haru tells him, and he climbs out.

-

Nagisa is gone the next morning.

Haru knows before he even checks the guest room – a feeling in the pit of his stomach gives it away first. In the kitchen, he finds a note next to a plate of mackerel that says:

**HARU-CHAN, THANK YOU FOR BEING SUCH A NICE HOME AWAY FROM HOME!! BUT NOW I HAVE TO GO BACK BECAUSE REI-CHAN IS A BETTER KISSER THAN YOU ARE!! I'M SORRY. WE'LL SEE YOU SOON XXXXXX!**

**PS SOMEONE IS WAITING FOR YOU**

He's drawn a little airplane by it, and an illustration of he and Rei doing something that, because of Nagisa's lack of artistic talent, looks incredibly inappropriate. Next to those, he's drawn Makoto's face. Haru can tell by the little dimple dots by the mouth.

Haru thinks, _forever is far too long for anyone to wait_ , takes a deep breath, and goes.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
